( 519 Fourth Street • P.O. Box 659 • Greenport, NY, 11944 CONGREGATION 1-631-477-0232 • www.tiferethisraelgreenport.org IN This issueinfo@tifereth -israel.com TIFERETH ISRAEL Affiliated With The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism A National Historic Site E-Volume 17 Number 1 January 2017/ Tevet-Shevat 5777 • CALENDAR OF EVENTS • Weekly and Holiday Services Fridays: Erev Shabbat, 7:30 p.m. Saturdays: Shabbat, 9:30 a.m. Learning at our Shul (Hebrew class moves to Thursday for the winter.) Thursdays, Jan. 5, 12, 19 and 26: Hebrew at 2:30; Parasha at 4. Shul Events Sunday, Jan. 8: Remembrances from Eastern Europe visits: photos and commentary by Debra Riva, Suzan Lipson, Stanley Rubin and Rabbi Gadi, time TBA. Sunday, Jan. 15: Basically Baroque quartet, concert, community room, 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15: Board and Congregation meetings, 9 and 10 a.m. Lighting Shabbat Candles in January Jan. 6: 4:26 p.m. Jan. 13: 4:33 p.m. Jan. 20: 4:41 p.m. Jan. 27: 4:49 p.m. Dates to Remember Monday, January 16: Martin Luther King Jr. Day Friday, Jan. 27: International Holocaust Remembrance Day Feb. 5 through March 3: Rabbi Gadi away Saturday, February 11: Tu B’Shevat (New Year for the trees) Monday, February 20: Presidents’ Day Sunday, March 12: Purim (Submission deadline for the February 2017 issue of The Shofar: January 20) From The Rabbi… A Trip to History All I was hoping for was an enjoyable post-High Holidays trip, driving through seven mostly Eastern European countries in three weeks. (Yes, I do find it relaxing.) The idea was to visit the countries, and to see some of the lesser-known sites. I was traveling with a WWII veteran, who is half a century ahead of me. That, of course, is our own gabbai, Stanley Rubin. But instead, what began as an innocent vacation became a deeply emotional and educational trip. After all, would God let a rabbi and a gabbai spend three weeks in Europe without a lesson? We left New York five days after the American election, and we arrived Europe in the midst of elections in several countries there. All the major newspapers were running photos and articles on their front pages about President Obama and/or President-elect Trump. As it turned out, Obama was visiting Europe and Greece, the cradle of democracy, at the same time that we were traveling in Europe. We started in Austria, where Stanley’s late wife, Eva, was born, and where they had visited many times. We enjoyed the beauty of Vienna and its delicious desserts. From there, we went to Salzburg and the Alps. While in Austria, we realized we were in Europe at an interesting time. Austria was going through a presidential election campaign. The outcome of the election was a slim victory for the Greens, the more liberal party. But as we discovered, that trend does not reflect the general spirit and the pendulum-swing to the right that is occurring throughout Europe. But this, in fact, was just the warm-up for what we experienced next. It started when we drove to the Czech Republic, where we began to follow the trail of past totalitarian governments and their aftermaths. We arrived in Prague on the evening of Nov. 17. Many streets were blocked to allow the commemoration and celebration of the Lidska Prava — the U.N. Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms that had passed in 1989, accompanying the domino fall of Communism 27 years ago. The main stage and vigil happened to be right in front of our hotel, so we were immediately drawn into the scene. A vigil to celebrate freedom Vigils accompany many celebrations of freedom, remembrances of all who had sacrificed their lives in the process. Later, I stood by the carpet of candles with many others who had assembled. We were strangers to each other, but together we experienced the camaraderie of the celebration. What surprised me, though, was the music. The scene was like a page out of ‘60s America: Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower,” Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind,” The Rolling Stones’ “Angie,” The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and The Doors’ “Light my Fire.” There was definitely a lot of fire that night. On our way north from Prague to Berlin, we stopped at the site of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, the only camp in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia. I had never been to one of the Nazi death camps, but having Holocaust survivors and many stories around me all my life, I didn’t think it would have such an impact. But the minute I walked in, I felt the people who were there: I saw their faces, and I shared their melancholy. The Talmud says that when you visit a sick person, you take one 60th of the burden of their sickness. One 60th symbolizes a very small, and at times, negligible portion. But this was a very sick place, and even one 60th was a heavy weight. I walked in as a tourist and left crying. I felt much like Jacob, who had arrived at “the place” when he was leaving home on the 2 way to Haran. The commentators debate whether or not Jacob knew this was “the place,” which the Talmud traces back to the binding of Isaac. Since Isaac was Jacob’s father and Abraham was his grandfather, it’s reasonable to believe that he knew of the place and its significance. What he didn’t know was how it would affect him. Having had the profound experience through the dream of the ladder with the angels going up and down from heaven, Jacob cries out: “How full of awe is this place!” (Gen. 28:17). Similar to Jacob, the profound experience of that place we had visited set the course for the rest of our trip. When we arrived Berlin, we met our good friend, the Lutheran minister Fr. Christophe. With him, we walked along the whole remaining Berlin Wall. I always imagined this wall much higher. After all, it was this wall that for many years separated two sides of the world, each representing a different philosophy of life. It was the fall of the domino-like concrete panels of this wall in September 1989, two months before the Lidska Prava that caused the mental walls to fall like dominos throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. Now, imagine this: a German minister, an Israeli rabbi, and an American WWII veteran walking along the Berlin Wall… The Polish ghetto Next was Poland. The road directly east from Berlin to Warsaw is about a six-hour drive. The Communist architecture is still dominant, sending us back again to the ‘60s. Warsaw’s modernity camouflages the area that was once the largest ghetto; more than 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area there not much larger than one square mile. The remaining witnesses are a plaque, a monument, and a new museum. To think that before WWII, every third resident in Warsaw was Jewish. And now, we were walking on the ground where thousands upon thousands were brutally murdered. When we were looking for the center of the ghetto, I was happy to see a pharmacy identified with Hebrew lettering — Bet Merkahat. This was when I began to realize that in Poland, many businesses maintain a façade of Jewish identity, even incorporating Hebrew writing but, in fact, they are not remotely Jewish. Recently, the Jewish community of Warsaw has been responsible for recovering various Jewish properties and landmarks throughout the country. The big yeshiva in Lublin is one of them. That was our next stop. In Lublin, we found ourselves hurrying to make it before the Majdanek death camp closed, and we found ourselves glad to have made it in time. Understanding the irony made the visit even more emotional. After a short visit at the camp, we were met by Fr. Mariusz, a Polish Catholic priest and our good friend, who spends summers with the Polish church on the East End of Long Island. He took us to visit Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, the most famous Yeshiva in Europe, founded by Rabbi Meir Shapiro in 1930. It was Rabbi Shapiro who also came up with the idea of the Daf Yomi — learning one page of Gemara each day and completing all tractates in seven years. Here too, the building was reclaimed and beautifully restored, but the Neshama — the soul — is no longer there. Sadly, a non-kosher restaurant now operates in what used to be one of the most important Jewish institutions of higher learning in the world. We toured the place with a man who was extremely enthusiastic about it. This is clearly a tourist’s destination and a moneymaker for the local population. Nevertheless, it is hard not to feel the sadness of the desolation. The same feeling continued in Krakow, a place that was once the crown jewel of Jewish life and learning, now mostly a relic. The trajectory that started in Prague continued through Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. Our attention focused in on the Jewish history there, and the trail of destruction and depression of the human spirit that Nazism and Communism left behind — dictators robbing the masses of their rights and freedom. And then, in the last days of our trip, Fidel Castro died and, with him, a whole era. The announcement of his death felt like the last chapter in the course we were taking through Europe, and what can happen when totalitarian states do not acknowledge the individual person and individual liberty.